Export and engine targets

Export evaluates the texture set at full resolution and writes one image per map with the packing, naming and colour space the destination expects. Pick the engine once with the project's Target and every texture set follows; or configure each set's preset by hand.

Export Textures

1. Click Export in the tool header to open the Export tab.
2. Choose Contents: Textures, Target Package (textures, per-set manifests and mesh), or Evaluated Bundle.
3. Choose Scope: Active Texture Set, Selected Objects' Texture Sets or All Texture Sets. Check the resolved sets and objects. An empty selection stays empty.
4. Choose Destination Preset, format, bit depth, optional resolution override and padding. The view lists per-set settings and overrides.
5. Choose the folder. If the project and set folders differ, explicitly select the intended destination.
6. Read Output Preview: every file, size, format, bit depth, packing, color space and existing-file conflict. Export flushes pending paint changes and writes that resolved plan.

BaseColor and Emission are encoded as sRGB; every other map contains linear data. Files are named {prefix}{texture_set}_{channel}{suffix}.{ext} with filesystem-safe names. Existing files are refused unless Replace Existing Files is enabled; otherwise choose a new folder, prefix or suffix. In Unreal and Unity import packed maps as linear data and normal maps with the engine's normal-map import setting.

UV padding and resolution

Validity comes from export geometry, so black or transparent surface pixels are still valid. Resolution changes filter valid texels only; normals are filtered as vectors. Packed channels receive padding before packing. The view reports effective width, and export reports meeting gutters, undersized islands and overlaps. Leave space between UV islands so their padded edges have room at smaller mip levels.

Projects saved before 0.13 adopt Automatic padding, with a notice until you choose a mode.

Export files together

Textures, manifests and meshes are prepared together before they are written to the destination. When replacing files, Open Painter keeps the previous export until the new one is complete. An interrupted export is recovered the next time you export to that folder.

UDIM exports

Export all tile sets together with a shared Export Name to produce numbered files such as Robot_BaseColor.1001.png and Robot_BaseColor.1002.png. The tile number appears before the extension, with channel packing determined by your preset. See exporting UDIM textures for setup.

Target renderer

The Target menu at the top of the Painter view — Blender, Unreal Engine 5, Unity HDRP, Unity URP, Godot 4 or Custom — sets the export conventions of every texture set that follows it, drives Engine Preview, and turns export into one click: Export › Unreal 5. Sets with Follow Project Target turned off keep their own preset for the ordinary Export Textures button.

Every target expects specular F0 = 0.04 (Principled Specular IOR Level 0.5) and applies AO to indirect light only. Export › <Target> exports the active set — or, with Selected Objects, every set assigned to the selection — with the target's packing, naming, format and resolution cap, writes a per-set <set>_manifest.json recording each file's convention, colour space and the compression the engine will typically apply (BC1/BC5/BC7), and exports the assigned objects as FBX or glTF with the target's axis and scale options. The set's saved settings are not changed by the export.

Engine Preview

Use Engine Preview to check how export encoding affects the material while you work in Blender. It previews:

• 8-bit Textures — colour, roughness and metallic quantised to 8 bits, colour through sRGB as the file stores it.
• Normal round trip — stored as 1−G for DirectX targets and decoded back; Reconstruct Normal Z drops the blue channel and rebuilds Z from X and Y the way BC5 or Unity's normal-map import does.
• Smoothness round trip for Unity targets.
• AO Indirect Only — the directly lit viewport shows no AO, as in the engine.
• The Standard view transform, restored to your previous setting when you turn the preview off.

These controls live inside the Open Painter Texture Set node. Turn Engine Preview off to return to the authoring view.

Production export

Production Export writes an evaluated bundle: a new scene, textures and manifest in a chosen directory with an engine profile and the same explicit replacement and transactional publication rules. Generated geometry helpers are included or omitted explicitly. Measure Density reports the active set's texel density, and Stage Atlas creates evaluated copies of the selected source props with new UVs at an explicitly chosen resolution. These actions live under Export › Prepare Export; Stage Mesh LOD creates a staged reduced mesh while preserving the source for comparison.

Use a target package for an asset ready to import, an evaluated bundle for a separate delivery scene, or textures alone when the destination project already has the mesh and materials.